[Ouroboros' End]
Seeing the mansion Darganth had acquired come into view as she turned right at the crossroads, Melidra felt relieved by the prospect of escaping the public streets of the town. Having just returned from the fields where the battle had happened, she was being accompanied by her newest creations in addition to her usual protectors. However, unlike the members of the adventuring team she had saved all those years ago, the newly risen undead looked the part and couldn't pass for a still-living creature, causing a strange mixture of looks from the townsfolk to follow her on her journey.
The sight visibly unnerved the people she passed. Even the day before, when she had worked with a few representatives of the town to lay the citizens she had raised in the battle to rest, they had been looking at her in suspicion, at times even with downright disgust. It turned out that even her status as part of Darganth's group wasn't enough to make them look past their opinions of necromancy.
It had eventually become so bad that she had abandoned her efforts for a time and waited until nightfall to continue. Without the constant whispers around, she had quickly made progress, though sadly not quick enough to finish before the artificial sun flared up to signal the start of the new day. As such, she had been exposed again to these same whispers she had escaped earlier. In fact, the civilians were even worse, their lack of understanding of magic likely leading to an even greater distrust toward necromancy.
Even as she walked toward the mansion, something that should be a stark reminder of who she was working with and what they had done for the town, the murmurs followed. Keeping their distance and watching her from a distance, the townsfolk crowded together in small groups, whispering in the belief that they were far enough away from her that she wouldn't hear their words, as if their eyes didn't also betray their thoughts.
But they were also wrong. Enhanced as her senses were, Melidra could hear them speak clearly from as much as a hundred meters away, only needing to focus somewhat to tune out the howling winds that rushed down the street. Every frown, every whisper of disgust, and every muttered exclamation of how unnatural her undead were thus clearly reached her ears.
Though it wasn't all negative. While there were fewer people who voiced positive opinions of her, Melidra did overhear some that ranged from merely relief that she was on their side to muttered reevaluations of their opinions on necromancy. Especially the latter kept her spirit high, as it reassured her that the ideas she had started to implement back on Ikrus could work. It had been and would be an uphill battle due to the reputation necromancy and its practitioners have gained over the millennia, but it made clear that people could look past it and hopefully learn to live alongside undead.
Still, their voices were a minority, making Melidra nonetheless relieved when she crossed through the gates of the mansion and soon after left the range at which she could hear the townsfolk. However, once inside, she didn't continue heading toward the main building and instead turned right at a fork in the path. Following the stone road as it wound through what had likely once been a truly impressive garden that now stood empty, she soon found herself on course toward the smaller building that was her destination.
Well, small was only accurate when compared to the main building, as the structure was still a massive warehouse whose main hall was almost a hundred meters wide and over twice as long. What the mansion's original owners needed so much space for, Melidra didn't know. But it also didn't matter, and so she was simply glad to have the space, with even the massive warehouse and its two subterranean floors not being able to hold all of the undead she had gained from the battle.
However, it was enough to fit the majority of them, including all of the common foot troops and other mindless creatures. Luckily, as unlike the higher forms of undead these didn't understand the concept of reigning in the necrotic energy they constantly released, something that would've quickly caused problems if they weren't kept in a sealed area.
Case in point, the moment Melidra opened the door, a flood of necrotic energy greeted her. Quickly raising her hand, she took hold of it before it could escape the building, first bottling up the energy before pushing it back into the building with a thrust of her palm.
"You should really get Cehlya or Darganth to create a barrier in the door. If that wave had escaped, you'd have destroyed every last plant on the property." Lara said as she entered the building just a step behind Melidra.
"As long as none of us make a mistake, this works too." Melidra answered with finality in her tone, not willing to repeat the conversation they had when they first repurposed the building. Besides, it wasn't merely laziness that dissuaded her from asking either of the two to create such a barrier, as the necrotic energy acted as a last line of defense for the newly assembled portions of her army by at least giving the rest of them a warning if the building was breached.
"Or she could put more effort into training her use of necrotic energy. Controlling it is just the start, and if used in tandem with vitality, you could kill and regrow the plants in a matter of minutes."
Melidra and Lara turned toward the voice that interjected in unison, only to be surprised by Cehlya standing there. At the sight of her, Lara practically froze, with only her head dipping slightly in a respectful bow.
"Mistress Cehlya." She said after a short pause in which she gathered her thoughts.
In contrast, Melidra only acknowledged her presence with a nod as she greeted her, "Lady Cehlya."
Responding to their greeting with a nod, Cehlya's eyes then wandered toward the undead following Melidra. "I see you've had some more success today."
The statement made Melidra turn around with a proud smirk. While the almost three dozen creatures that stood there were but a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of thousands she had gained from the war, their combined power might nonetheless be greater. At the very least, it would be close.
All thirty-one creatures were raised from mythic ranks. That alone gave her a lot of potential to work with in their creation, with residual mana being converted into necrotic energy and the strengthened physiques of aura users leading to stronger zombies. The latter effect might not be as great as it was with beasts simply because aura users mostly relied on the aura itself for their increased strength, but it still helped.
But what was more important than the power contained within the corpses was what Melidra had done with them. While zombies didn't have different stages of what was effectively evolution as skeleton-type undead had, Cehlya's training had included flesh-crafting as one of the applications of vitality manipulation. It wasn't perfect due to her abysmal skill with nature magic, but for most purposes proficiency in either type of magic was enough to get a good result.
As a result, the creatures were well beyond merely being stronger zombies that retained some capability to wield the elements the smugglers had specialized in, something that would've likely seen their combat power drop below the Impact Stage of mythic rank prowess.
Melidra had achieved this by reshaping their forms, causing their bodies to expand to around three meters tall while giving them a distinctly inhuman appearance, even more so than the lifeless flesh of usual zombies. Whereas usual zombies still bore a semblance of what they once were, the creatures arrayed behind Melidra had been molded with their respective elements. In some cases, fleshcrafting facilitated that fusion, like in the four zombies whose skin had been replaced with tree bark. In others, the elements served to enhance the grafted aspects of the zombies, with two having their forearms replaced with massive blades that consisted of a thin layer of metal above the reshaped bone that gave them their shape.
Watching as Cehlya studied these changes and occasionally nodded in satisfaction, Melidra couldn't help but smile with pride. Even in the beginning, when she had balked at the idea of serving someone, anyone, she had never dismissed Cehlya's advice. She would've been stupid to do so, considering how the woman was a goddess who had lived for longer than history back on Ikrus was remembered. And ultimately, that wisdom and the help it was to her was one of the impulses that made Melidra rethink her initial dislike for serving Cehlya. So it wasn't surprising that now that she accepted it, she perhaps valued the goddess's opinion even more, some parts of her even wanting to earn her approval, even if she rarely if ever showed it and would never admit to it.
But with Cehlya only wordlessly signaling her approval, Melidra still had a question burning in her mind, "How do you think each of them would fare against the smuggler whose corpse I raised them from?"
Humming in acknowledgment of the question, Cehlya paused for a moment as she thought about it. Fundamentally, each undead was weaker than the person had been in life when it comes to their raw energy reserves. Not only was there always some loss in the process of raising them, but their reserves were also no longer pure mana but rather a mixture of mana and necrotic energy, something that made their death magic stronger but made their usage of all other elements less efficient.
"Difficult to say, at least for some." Cehlya said before letting her gaze wander toward a specific zombie and nodding in its direction. "Though that one is near perfect for what you had to work with. Might even be worth going out and having it feed on the life forces of a few monsters in the wilderness when we're away, its growth should manage to keep up with most other types of undead."
Melidra smiled at the praise. It had been a risk to raise the smugglers as zombies when skeletons would've also benefitted from their lingering magic and gained more necrotic energy. But they wouldn't have suffered from the usage inefficiencies, at least not when using the innate powers they derive from their undead state. This also made it more worthwhile to have them feed on vitality to strengthen their necrotic energy reserves, at least typically. The fact that Cehyla suspected this specific one would nonetheless be worth the effort thus even almost made her overlook the sentence directly before that.
But only almost, prompting Melidra to turn toward Cehlya in surprise with a few moments' delay. "Wait, while you're away? Am I not coming with you to the goddess' palace?"
"I'd advise against it. I won't stop you if you want to, but let me explain myself first."
Waiting a moment for Melidra to nod, Cehlya then continued, "As you know, Scalladras sensed her divinity when they met her a few days ago, and she's significantly more powerful than we had expected. Now, originally I saw no reason why you couldn't join us because it didn't impact my plan of keeping my divine status hidden as long as possible, hopefully even until at least one of us can contest her in a direct fight if necessary. But if she's as experienced as Scalladras suspects, she might notice the traces of my divinity in you that come from my blessing and recognize their similarity to my own mana signature. And while I might be able to obscure my divinity from her senses, I don't have an idea of where to even begin answering the questions this would create, not without revealing my status."
Hearing her explanation, a sigh escaped Melidra's lips. Nodding along by the second half, she resigned herself to accept the situation, reluctant to do so but seeing the reasoning.
"That doesn't mean that you won't be able to help us at all during the trip." Disappointed at first, Cehlya's follow-up quickly drew Melidra's interest and made her perk up. As the goddess then explained her plan to utilize the connection her blessing had created between them as a fallback, Melidra's lips slowly curled up into a smile.